What YOU can do ​to help save our county from more toxic waste:

Enough is enough. Portage County and Ohio have become the dumping ground for toxic waste from oil and gas wells, threatening our water, our farms, and increasing the possibility of earthquakes. Please support a moratorium on permitting more Class II waste injection wells.

NO Water Monitoring in November or December: See you in January!

We'll see you in January, 2016 at the Hiram Christian Church, 7 p.m., January 25th (the fourth Monday of the month). Bring a clean, fresh sample of your water before any treatment (as close to your water well as possible), in a glass jar. We'll have some cookies and hot cider while you wait. Because the fourth Monday in November and December are so close to holidays, we've canceled our program for these two months. ​See you in January! Click on the button above for more information about this program.

Students designed a 100% solar house that laughs at hurricanes

. . . .[designed by] students at New Jersey's Stevens Institute of Technology, known as the SURE (SUstainable REsilience) House, . . . it just won the 2015 Solar Decathlon, sponsored by the US Department of Energy. . . .The goal of the Sure House project was a house that could stand up to the severe weather that's increasingly slated for the North Atlantic coast. It's slightly elevated and designed to weather up to 5 feet of flooding — the bottom portion of the building envelope is completely sealed and waterproof. . . .Fresh air is brought in and circulated through an "energy recovery ventilator," which takes the heat out of the exiting air and adds it to the incoming air (or vice versa), radically reducing the energy needed to heat and cool the house.All that insulating, along with energy-efficient appliances, means that Sure House uses about 90 percent less energy than the average New Jersey house. That level of energy demand can be met entirely with solar panels — and it's the clever use of solar panels that's the coolest thing about Sure House. Read more.

Waste disposal is an issue that causes quite a bit of consternation even amongst those that are pro-fracking. The disposal of fracking waste into injection wells has exposed many “hidden geologic faults” across the US as a result of induced seismicity, and it has been linked recently with increases in earthquake activity in states like Arkansas, Kansas, Texas, and Ohio. . . . a preponderance of the waste is coming from outside Ohio with out-of-state shale development accounting for ≈90% of the state’s hydraulic fracturing brine stream to-date. However, more recently the tables have turned with in-state waste increasing by 4,202 barrels per quarter per well. . .Read more.

Green Seattle Stands Up Under Threat

SEATTLE — The environmental messaging never stops here, whether from a city-owned electric utility that gets nearly 98 percent of its power from sources untainted by carbon (and is not about to let residents forget it) or the fussy garbage collectors who can write tickets for the improper sorting of recyclables.

So when a lease was signed allowing Royal Dutch Shell, the petrochemical giant, to bring its Arctic Ocean drilling rigs to the city’s waterfront, the result was a kind of civic call to arms. A unanimous City Council lined up alongside the mayor to question the legality of the agreement with the Port of Seattle, a court challenge was filed by environmental groups, and protesters, in bluster or bluff, vowed to block the rigs’ arrival — though the exact timetable is secret, for security reasons — with a flotilla of kayaks in Elliott Bay. Read more here.

Lessons in Injection Wells Coming to a City, Village or Township near you

CCO brings the news to every elected official in Portage County:Injection wells put Portage County at risk!Members of CCO are visiting every city, village, and township in Portage County with information about injection wells. They are attending every council and every trustee meeting not just once, but six times. Each of the six appearance centers on an important topic regarding injection well hazards, and each is supported by scientific studies, data, and white papers from government sources. The six topics include the volume of waste brought to Portage, the number and type of chemicals involved, the life of well casing and cement, the health impacts of fracking chemicals in air and water, the economics of “who makes the money,” and what communities can do to protect themselves from injection well hazards. CCO members are also willing to bring the presentations in series or in a single presentation to local agencies, civic groups, churches, and interested individuals.“We must know what is happening to us,” says CCO coordinator Mary Greer. “Once we have the facts, we can decide for ourselves what we want—and what we don’t want.” CCO presentations are nonpartisan and are not affiliated with any religion or political party. Packets provided with each presentation are available to all present and include cited research, with no “opinion” pieces included. For further information, the public is invited to call Mary Greer, 330-472-8086 If you have heard about "toxic 'fracking' waste" or earthquakes, are worried about injection wells, contact your local public officials to find out if they have had this presentation. If they have not, contact Mary Greer to find out how YOU can present this information to your officials.

Fighting for the Places We Love

"Common Dream editor's note: The following conversation between Naomi Klein and May Boeve took place as an online webinar hosted by 350.org last week in advance of the upcoming Global Divestment Day(s), taking place on February 13 and 14, during which individuals and institutions from around the world will take action and urge others 'to do what is necessary for climate action by divesting from fossil fuels." Here's one quote from NK: "I feel like it almost needs to be simple enough to fit on a postcard: what is it that we’re fighting for? We’re fighting to leave it in the ground. No new fossil fuel frontiers. We’re fighting for societies powered by 100% renewable energy. We’re fighting for free public transit, I would add that. We’re fighting for the principle that polluters should pay, that how we pay for the transition has to be justice based. We’re fighting for the principle of frontlines first, that the people who got the worst deal in the old economy should be the first in line to benefit in the new economy. Those are some principles that we can all agree on and rally behind." Read More here.

Maybe he hasn’t figured out all the details to make them technically feasible for mass production yet. But a concept for shoes that generate electricity has earned 22-year-old Vancouver university student Taylor Ward, who describes himself in his resume as “an aspiring experience designer looking to learn, grow and take the world by storm,” a slot as one of the five finalists in the Interaction Design Association (IXDA) 2015 Student Design Challenge. . . .Inspired by Vancouver’s goal to become the greenest city in the world by 2020, Ward proposed a shoe he calls Step. It features insoles that produce energy as the wearer walks through a system of piezoelectric nano-generators and capacitors that capture and store the energy. As the shoes collect energy—over 100w with each step, Ward says—the wearer would go to a transfer station where they would discharge it into wireless charging pads. That energy could then be used to power homes, schools and businesses. Ward proposes placing them in high-traffic areas like transit stations, parks, schools, busy street corners and hockey arenas (this is Canada, after all!) Read full article here.

Banks Fear Risk of Investment in Fossil Fuels

In a move that’s likely to cause consternation in some of the world’s most powerful corporate boardrooms, the Bank of England has disclosed that it is launching an inquiry into the risks fossil fuel companies pose to overall financial stability. Mark Carney, governor of the UK’s central bank, has written to British Members of Parliament telling them that his officials have been discussing whether or not coal, oil and gas reserves held by the fossil fuel industry are, in fact, unburnable. Read more here.

U.S. Crackdown on Oil Trains—Less Than Meets the Eye

The first public action U.S. rail regulators took after a fiery oil train explosion killed 47 people in Canada in July 2013 seemed clear, impactful and firm: Trains carrying hazardous materials could no longer be left unattended with their engines running unless the railroad first got approval from the Federal Railroad Administration.Leaving a freight train unattended overnight with the engines running had been a major factor in the Lac-Megantic, Canada, disaster, and the August 2, 2013 news release announcing the U.S. action had a no-more-business-as-usual tone. The emergency order was "a mandatory directive to the railroad industry, and failure to comply will result in enforcement actions," the press release said, adding no train shall be left unattended on the tracks with its engines running "unless specifically authorized."

Rooftop Solar Cost Competitive with the Grid in Much of the U.S.

. . . .a recent report from Deutsche Bank shows that solar has already achieved so-called “price parity” with fossil fuel-based grid power in 10 U.S. states. Deutsche Bank goes on to say that solar electricity is on track to be as cheap or cheaper than average electricity-bill prices in all but three states by 2016—assuming,that is, that the federal government maintains the 30 percent solar investment tax credit it currently offers homeowners on installation and equipment costs.. . . .homeowners in states where additional local incentives are available and there’s lots of sunshine—such as across the Southwest—may in fact already be able to power their homes cheaper with the sun than from the grid. Homeowners looking to go solar should check out the Database of State Incentives for Renewable and Efficiency (DSIRE), a free online database of all the different state and local incentives for solar and other forms of renewable energy.Read more here.

Proving Power of Renewables, Wind Making Dirty Fuels Obsolete in Northern Europe

The wind power boom in Nordic countries is making fossil fuel-fired power plants obsolete and is pushing electricity prices down, according to reporting by Reuters published Friday.Power prices in Finland, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden have dropped sharply as renewable energy floods the market, efficiency measures lower energy use overall, and growth remains stagnant, reporter Nerijus Adomaitis writes. This, in turn, will lead to the "mothballing" of 2,000 megawatts (MW) of coal capacity in Denmark and Finland over the next 15 years, a Norway-based consultant tells Adomaitis. . . . Joseph J. Mangano, executive director of the Radiation and Public Health Project in New York, said Germany's example was instructive: "For years, many have claimed that renewables were far too costly to ever be a major force in the energy mix," he said. . . .Mangano continued, "Germany’s energy future, highly dependent on safe renewable sources like wind and solar, will pay great dividends. Its people will see lower electric bills. Fewer will suffer from costly diseases like cancer. Effects of global warming will be slowed. The U.S. and other developed nations should observe the German effort and step up efforts to build an energy mix based largely on safe, renewable sources." And now, perhaps, the Nordic effort too. Read the full article.

Radioactive Waste from Fracking waste

A few months ago, a Marcellus Shale operator approached Leong Ying, business development manager at the radiation measurement division of Thermo Fisher Scientific, with a problem. The driller, whom Mr. Ying declined to name, was trying to dispose of oil and gas waste at area landfills but the trucks kept tripping radiation alarms. Rejected trucks had to be sent back to well pads or taken out of state, both costly options. It was happening enough that it started nudging the company’s bottom line, Mr. Ying said. “Once you hit them in the pocket, then they stand up and take notice,” he said. Read more.

Compendium of Research on Fracking

Horizontal drilling combined with high-volume hydraulic fracturing and clustered multi-well pads are recently combined technologies for extracting oil and natural gas from shale bedrock. As this unconventional extraction method (collectively known as “fracking”) has pushed into more densely populated areas of the United States, and as fracking operations have increased in frequency and intensity, a significant body of evidence has emerged to demonstrate that these activities are inherently dangerous to people and their communities. Risks include adverse impacts on water, air, agriculture, public health and safety, property values, climate stability and economic vitality. Note that this Compendium has over 300 citations from peer-reviewed articles, news reports of accidents, and industry sources. READ THE WHOLE DOCUMENT HERE.

The Solutions Project

"In June of 2011, a scientist, an actor, a banker and a filmmaker were sitting around a table talking about their opposition to extreme energy extraction. Their conversation sparked an important realization - it wasn’t enough for them to be against something. They needed to be part of the solution. That day, Mark Jacobson, Mark Ruffalo, Marco Krapels and Josh Fox created The Solutions Project. Our Mission: Use the powerful combination of science + business + culture to accelerate the transition to 100% clean, renewable energy." READ ABOUT 50 PLANS FOR 50 STATES. CLICK HERE to hear what Professor Anthony Ingraffea has to say about The Solutions Project Plan for NYS versus the NYS Plan and the science behind each (about 35 min.). CLICK HERE to read what Professor Mark Jacobson (Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Director, Atmosphere/Energy Program, Senior Fellow, Woods Institute for the Environment, Senior Fellow, Precourt Institute for Energy and one of the key developers of the Solutions Project) has to say about The Solutions Project.

What the Anti-Fracking Movement Brings to the Climate Movement

". . . . Those who oppose natural gas extraction via fracking first came together because we didn’t want to be poisoned. In New York state, we sought to halt fracking before it started because of what we saw across the border in the gaslands of Pennsylvania: families with nose bleeds and rashes. Sick pets. Horses and livestock with mysterious ailments. Devastated landscapes. Most of all, we came together to protect our drinking water, and, now that the science is beginning catch up to the speed at which fracking is rolling across the nation, an ever-expanding collection of empirical data shows that our concerns were well founded. It turns out that the same unfixable engineering problem that sets the table for contaminating our water also contaminates the atmosphere with climate-killing methane.The problem is that fracked wells are fragile wells. Too often, they leak. The brutal actions of fracking itself, which uses a slurry of highly pressurized water, chemicals and sandas a club to shatter the shale in order to free the oil or gas—can sometimes deform or crack the cement gasket around the wellbore. That’s how fracked wells can lose their integrity. That’s how they leak. And once they start leaking, you can’t turn them off." READ MORE ABOUT THE CONNECTION WITH THE CLIMATE CHANGE MOVEMENT.

Global Shale Gas Development: Water Availability & Business Risks

Shale resources are unevenly distributed worldwide and, for the most part, not located where freshwater is abundant. For example, China, Mexico, and South Africa have some of the largest technically recoverable shale gas resources (based on estimates from the U.S. Energy Information Administration), but face high to extremely high water stress where the shale is located.This report reveals that lack of water availability could curtail shale development in many places around the world:

38 percent of shale resources are in areas that are either arid or under high to extremely high levels of water stress;

19 percent are in areas of high or extremely high seasonal variability; and

15 percent are in locations exposed to high or extremely high drought severity.

Furthermore, 386 million people live on the land over these shale plays, and in 40 percent of the shale plays, irrigated agriculture is the largest water user. Thus drilling and hydraulic fracturing often compete with other demands for freshwater, which can result in conflicts with other water users. READ MORE.

Pipeline Giant Handed Permit to Open Tar Sands Rail Facility

On the Friday before Labor Day—in the form of an age-old “Friday News Dump“—the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) handed a permit to Enbridge, the tar sands-carrying corporate pipeline giant, to open a tar sands-by-rail facility in Flanagan, Illinois by early 2016. With the capacity to accept 140,000 barrels of tar sands product per day, the company’s rail facility serves as another step in the direction towards Enbridge’s quiet creation of a “Keystone XL clone.” That is, like TransCanada’s Keystone pipeline system sets out to do, sending Alberta’s tar sands all the way down to the Gulf of Mexico’s refinery row—and perhaps to the global export market. READ MORE.

Government Accounting Office Report to Congress on Drinking Water

EPA Program to Protect Underground Sources from Injection of Fluids Associated with Oil and Gas Production Needs Improvement. Highlights of GAO-14-555,
a report to congressional requestersWhy GAO Did This Study. Every day in the United States, at least 2 billion gallons of fluids are injected into over 172,000 wells to enhance oil and gas production, or to dispose of fluids brought to the surface during the extraction of oil and gas resources. These wells are subject to regulation to protect drinking water sources under EPA’s UIC class II program and approved state class II programs. Because much of the population relies on underground sources for drinking water, these wells have raised concerns about the safety of the nation’s drinking water. GAO was asked to review EPA’s oversight of the class II program. This report examines (1) EPA and state roles, responsibilities, and resources for the program, (2) safeguards to protect drinking water, (3) EPA oversight and enforcement of class II programs, and (4) the reliability of program data for reporting. GAO reviewed federal and state laws and regulations. GAO interviewed EPA and state officials and reviewed class II programs from a nongeneralizable sample of eight states selected on the basis of shale oil and gas regions and the highest number of class II wells.What GAO Recommends GAO recommends that, among other things, EPA review emerging risks related to class II program safeguards and ensure that it can effectively oversee and efficiently enforce class II programs. EPA agreed with all but the enforcement recommendation. GAO continues to believe that EPA should take actions to ensure it can enforce state class II regulations, as discussed in the report. Read More.

Seven Earthquakes Hit Oklahoma in 14 Hours, Raising Fracking Concerns

Published on Monday, July 14, 2014 by Common Dreams. Studies have linked wastewater injection to increasing seismic activity- Deirdre Fulton, staff writer. Seven small earthquakes shook Oklahoma within 14 hours this weekend, lending further credence to the claim that fracking increases seismic hazards. This weekend's quakes registered between 2.6 and 4.3 on the Richter scale. Last month, Oklahoma passed California as the state with the most earthquakes, and scientists believe the increase is man-made. In a joint statement earlier this year, the US Geological Survey and the Oklahoma Geological survey noted that the changes in earthquake rates "do not seem to be due to typical, random fluctuations in natural seismicity rates." The statement continued: "The analysis suggests that a likely contributing factor to the increase in earthquakes is triggering by wastewater injected into deep geologic formations. This phenomenon is known as injection-induced seismicity, which has been documented for nearly half a century, with new cases identified recently in Arkansas, Ohio, Texas and Colorado." Read more.

BY EMILY ATKIN JULY 11, 2014 AT 9:21 AM. The World Council of Churches, a global coalition of 345 churches, made the decision to no longer fund oil, gas, or coal at its central committee meeting in Geneva, and recommended that its members do the same. “The committee discussed the ethical investment criteria, and considered that the list of sectors in which the WCC does not invest should be extended to include fossil fuels,” read the finance policy committee report. Read more.

The Turning Point: New Hope for the Climate.It's time to accelerate the shift toward a low-carbon future. . . . .Our ability to convert sunshine into usable energy has become much cheaper far more rapidly than anyone had predicted. The cost of electricity from photovoltaic, or PV, solar cells is now equal to or less than the cost of electricity from other sources powering electric grids in at least 79 countries. By 2020 – as the scale of deployments grows and the costs continue to decline – more than 80 percent of the world's people will live in regions where solar will be competitive with electricity from other sources. . . .Germany, Europe's industrial powerhouse, where renewable subsidies have been especially high, now generates 37 percent of its daily electricity from wind and solar; and analysts predict that number will rise to 50 percent by 2020. Read more here.

Pipeline Workshop. What you should know if a "landman" comes to your door asking you to sign an easement or threatens eminent domain for a pipeline. Why you should find out if you have a pipeline in your community. More information here.

Why should Ohio worry about waste injection wells? Two alarming stories:FIRST: "Ohio annually processes thousands of tons of radioactive waste from hydraulic-fracturing, sending it through treatment facilities, injecting it into its old and unused gas wells and dumping it in landfills. . . . .the legislature, lobbied by the fracking industry, undid the governor's bid to have the testing of the waste done by the state's Department of Health — the agency acknowledged by many to possess the most expertise with radioactive material. The testing is now the responsibility of the Department of Natural Resources, the agency that oversees the permitting and inspection of oil and gas drilling sites, but that has no track record for dealing with radioactive waste." Read More.

SECOND: In Donna Young’s 19 years as a midwife, she’s made house calls to hundreds of mothers in Utah’s Uintah Basin, and never delivered a stillbirth—until last May. She was startled. “Everything seemed to be normal, everything seemed to be good. [But] when the baby was born, she never even tried to take her first breath. It wasn’t a struggle or anything, it just wasn’t there.” When Young attended the child’s memorial at a cemetery in the town of Vernal a few days later, a woman pointed out a few other fresh graves. The headstones were engraved with baby feet, or just one date—markers for infants who either were stillbirths or were born and died the same day. Read more.

Climate impacts 'overwhelming' - UN. The impacts of global warming are likely to be "severe, pervasive and irreversible", a major report by the UN has warned. Scientists and officials meeting in Japan say the document is the most comprehensive assessment to date of the impacts of climate change on the world. Some impacts of climate change include a higher risk of flooding and changes to crop yields and water availability. Humans may be able to adapt to some of these changes, but only within limits. An example of an adaptation strategy would be the construction of sea walls and levees to protect against flooding. Another might be introducing more efficient irrigation for farmers in areas where water is scarce. Natural systems are currently bearing the brunt of climatic changes, but a growing impact on humans is feared. Members of the UN's climate panel say it provides overwhelming evidence of the scale of these effects. Read more here.

Officials not keeping track of oil trains. With oil being produced in new areas that don’t have pipelines, more crude is heading to refineries in rail cars. Yet neither federal nor state regulators track the shipments that are increasingly crisscrossing the country – potentially cutting through neighborhoods and business districts nationwide. . . .“Regulators across North America simply have not kept up with the boom in moving oil by train,” said Keith Stewart, a Canadian-based researcher for the environmental group Greenpeace. “You would be shocked how little governments know how much and where and when this oil is moving by rail.” Read more here.

There is already a natural gas depot for exporting American natural gas. There are 26 more applications on the table to be approved. If these are indeed approved, then big oil will move forward and sign LONG TERM CONTRACTS to guarantee American natural gas to foreign countries. This industry will have to make good on these contracts. That will mean more drilling at any cost, and at the expense of Americans. That will mean tens of thousands of more wells. Hundreds of billions of gallons of fresh drinking water polluted. And the attempted disposal of hundreds of billions of gallons of toxic waste water. Read here.

Mountaineer Keystone's Plans for NE Portage County. NE Portage County has had only a few High Volume Horizontal Shale (HVHS) wells drilled, and those were drilled by Mountaineer Keystone. Because gas or oil is everywhere in shale, productive drilling requires well pads to be placed as frequently as possible (in many heavily drilled states, every square mile). Our members have been looking up public records to discover which parts of Portage County have been leased for drilling and have discovered that Mt. Keystone has also obtained easements for pipelines. The parcels of land in NE Portage (red, green and blue) on which Mt. Keystone has leases or easements have now been mapped byFracTracker.Click here to see large Map and Explanation.

SOLAR SHINGLES MADE FROM COMMON METALS OFFER CHEAPER ENERGY OPTIONU.S. scientists say that emerging photovoltaic technologies will enable the production of solar shingles made from abundantly available elementsrather than rare-earth metals, an innovation that would make solar energy cheaper and more sustainable. Speaking at the annual meeting of the American Chemical Society, a team of researchers described advances in solar cells made with abundant metals, such as copper and zinc. While the market already offers solar shingles that convert the sun’s energy into electricity, producers typically must use elements that are scarce and expensive, such as indium and gallium. High-tech products increasingly make use of rare metals, and mining those resources can have devastating environmental consequences. But two experts look at the consequences of blocking projects like the proposed Pebble Mine in Alaska. Read More. READ THE e360 REPORT

Durango TX Pipeline Explosion (6.7.10)

FRIDAY, JAN 31, 2014 08:00 AM ESTThe scariest thing about fracking is the risk nobody is talking about: A dense, poorly regulated network of pipelines [emphasis added] carries explosive gas hundreds of miles away drilling sites. . . . According to former Mobil Oil executive Lou Allstadt, the greatest danger of fracking is the methane it adds to the atmosphere through leaks from wells, pipelines, and other associated infrastructure. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has found leakage rates of 2.3% to 17% of annual production at gas and oil fields in California, Colorado, and Utah. Moreover, no technology can guarantee long-term safety decades into the future when it comes to well casings (there are hundreds of thousands offrack wells in the U.S. to date) or in the millions of miles of pipelines that crisscross this country. . . . Carl Weimer, executive director of Pipeline Safety Trust, a non-profit watchdog organization, says that, on average, there is “a significant incident — somewhere — about every other day. And someone ends up in the hospital or dead about every nine or ten days.” This begs the question: are pipelines carrying shale gas different in their explosive potential than other pipelines?“There isn’t any database that allows you to get at that,” says Richard Kuprewicz, a pipeline safety expert and consultant of 40 years’ experience. “If it’s a steel pipeline and it has enough gas in it under enough pressure, it can leak or rupture.” Read More.

WASHINGTON — Coca-Cola has always been more focused on its economic bottom line than on global warming, but when the company lost a lucrative operating license in India because of a serious water shortage there in 2004, things began to change.Today, after a decade of increasing damage to Coke’s balance sheet as global droughts dried up the water needed to produce its soda, the company has embraced the idea of climate change as an economically disruptive force.“Increased droughts, more unpredictable variability, 100-year floods every two years,” said Jeffrey Seabright, Coke’s vice president for environment and water resources, listing the problems that he said were also disrupting the company’s supply of sugar cane and sugar beets, as well as citrus for its fruit juices. “When we look at our most essential ingredients, we see those events as threats.”

Coke reflects a growing view among American business leaders and mainstream economists who see global warming as a force that contributes to lower gross domestic products, higher food and commodity costs, broken supply chains and increased financial risk. Their position is at striking odds with the longstanding argument, advanced by the coal industry and others, that policies to curb carbon emissions are more economically harmful than the impact of climate change. Read Whole Article.Click here for larger image and more information about the evidence for climate change.